User talk:Alonshow
Welcome Hi, welcome to ! Probably nobody has yet looked at your edit to the Armor Class page, but someone will. Please leave a message on my talk page if I can help with anything! Erik the Mad (talk) 04:18, December 16, 2015 (UTC) Re: Time system page As described in the reason for the page's deletion, it was completely unnecessary. It served no purpose, as going into that much detail about such an insignificant feature of the game is quite pointless. - Erik the Mad (talk) 15:17, May 28, 2016 (UTC) :Alonshow, don't bother editing anything on this wiki. The only active admin is randomly deleting content, preventing people from adding new content and making this wiki unreadable. --YoDsanklai (talk) 06:12, May 29, 2016 (UTC) ::It most certainly is not 'random.' If a page isn't suitable, it gets deleted. The same goes for all wikis - Erik the Mad (talk) 14:05, May 29, 2016 (UTC) ::::The time system is one of the most important and complex features of these games, and this wiki has no information about it. I spent several hours compiling and editing that information and now my work is lost. YoDsanklai, you're absolutely right, thank you for the heads up. Now I understand why the quality of this wiki is so poor. I will definitely not bother contributing anymore. Alonshow (talk) 15:00, May 29, 2016 (UTC) :::::YoDsanklai and Alonshow you two should really stop picking on the guy. I am not a regular contributor to the Wiki but I do visit it often and Erik the Mad does a good job of managing the Wiki singlehandedly. In the end it's the Admin's decision to decide which pages stay on the Wiki and which don't and you should learn to respect the decision, especially since it's not without reason. All Wikis and their Admins love to have new contributors and no one would remove/undo your edits without reason. I myself have had some of my threads removed but I realize that it wasn't done without reason (I once wrote a huge paragraph on a discussion page asking for mod suggestions.. Sorry about that btw Eric the Mad!). If you don't agree with something then don't contribute but it's wrong to blame it all on a single admin. 17:01, May 29, 2016 (UTC) (←) No, deleting a significant contribution a mere hours after it has been added to the wiki is not acceptable. It is even quite rude since Alonshow took some time to do that kind of contribution and they were not consulted or even notified about the deletion. And no, an admin is not an owner of the wiki but someone who is trusted to have a few extra buttons and to use them for the benefit of the community. To his credit, Erik the Mad is able to deal with vandals, but treating any new contributor like a vandal and an enemy is what has prevented any new user from trying to make a real contribution to this wiki. --YoDsanklai (talk) 19:54, May 29, 2016 (UTC) :I do not treat new editors as vandals. I treat vandals as vandals. I don't know why you need to keep hearing this, but if a page is not necessary or productive, then it does not belong here. - Erik the Mad (talk) Ehh, I did not say admins are owners of the Wiki. I said they have the decisive power. Anyone in a position of power on any Wiki is put there because they are well equipped to make the right decisions for the benefit of the Wiki. When you play a game as layered as Baldur's Gate it is a given that you would know some basics about the game play. If not then the next thing we know we'll have pages saying "function of pause button in the menu" doing the rounds. Anyone who's editing on a Wiki puts in time there but that does not mean that all edits they make are correct or necessary. Anyway, there's so much else to do on the Wiki. If an admin is telling you specifically not to do a particular thing and giving you a valid reason too then is it so hard to agree? As for not giving a reason I'm sure you're familiar with deletion logs. You can find the reasons there. For this particular case read the very first message in this thread. 20:47, May 29, 2016 (UTC) :I appreciate the support, but I think it's best to let this matter go. It's being dragged out by someone whom, by his own admission on his profile page, is "no longer active on this wiki," so I think it's clear that he's only hanging around to stir up trouble - trolling, in other words. - Erik the Mad (talk) 21:05, May 29, 2016 (UTC) :::I don't know YoDsanklai, but I'd say he keeps some hope that this wiki will eventually be managed in a sensible way. Hope is good, but it looks pointless while this wiki is managed by someone who believes that understanding the difference between a round and a turn is "completely unnecessary" for Baldur's Gate players. I'm glad at least he acknowledges the problem in his nickname: "the Mad". Alonshow (talk) 21:31, May 29, 2016 (UTC) Yeah you are right Eric the Mad. He and his buddy seem way too eager to start a fight. Sorry for barging in but I've seen this kind of behavior way too often and it's kind of annoying when people moan about having 5 minutes of their time wasted while they have no qualms about dissing the years of hard work the admins and other contributions put into the Wiki. I shall no longer comment on this page as I agree that this is getting dragged out into an invitation of a fight now. Peace to the two new contributors and good luck. 02:13, May 30, 2016 (UTC) Time system page restorion Hi Alonshow, I just happened to see your Time system article from ashes and restore it, learned a great deal from reading it, specially the “Calendar” & "The Roll of Years" sub headers which I never paid much attention to before. Keep up the great work and feel free to check Game Terminology page which you may like. Islandking (talk) 14:30, September 8, 2017 (UTC) ---- Update: The calendar part of the page has been moved to Calendar of Harptos page, while giving the porper credits to the original site. Islandking (talk) 13:16, September 9, 2017 (UTC) :Thank you, Islandking! I think I got most of the info for that article from the manual of the game and added some from my own knowledge and the Beamdog forums, but it's been a year and a half, so I might be wrong. I currently don't play BG, but I will definitely come back to contribute to the wiki if I start playing again. Alonshow (talk) 11:02, September 17, 2017 (UTC) Re:Message Hi Alonshow, Glad to hear it. There’s been a lot happenings to this wikia of late, and it depends on the BG community to keep it going forwards, so please, do come back and keep on the posting the excellent work. Let me know if I can help you by leaving messages on my talk page :-) Islandking (talk) 13:07, September 17, 2017 (UTC) Your "proofreadings" Hi, and a welcome from the currently active administrator here on the wiki (who was in a minor hiatus when you started to become active again recently). After having reverted some of your rewording on , I have to admit that is now the second time I don't agree with your work. As you changed really much in only one step – instead of section editing –, I will undo the whole thing: although some paragraphs indeed benefited from your changes, there's too much information you simply removed, worsened or put plain wrong. You want to talk about this? -- -- You talkin' to me? -- cC -- 18:43, March 31, 2019 (UTC) :I have done a lot of changes in the wiki, and I'm sure that I must have made mistakes along the way. I would appreciate it if somebody told me about any mistakes I make, that would be very helpful. However, reverting all my changes to a long page like Thief without any explanation doesn't seem like a positive approach. I think it would be more constructive to discuss the mistakes I might have made and try to correct them. :Alonshow (talk) 23:52, April 1, 2019 (UTC) ::Well, the above is not exactly "without any explanation", don't you think? And as mentioned there, section editing would have been an option to select specific changes for correction/reverting/further edits/etc. instead of undoing "all your changes to a long page" in one step. ::You want details? ::*"This page is specifically for …" makes more sense in combination with the following sentence. ::*You removed the whole section about usable items, as well as "All races can become a thief as a profession." ::*I don't agree with your handling of the expanded Thieving Abilities: "Baldur's Gate 2 adds" – despite the wrong numbering system, "2" instead of "II" – makes no sense for players who started right with the Enhanced Edition of Baldur's Gate I. ::*There's still the – from my point of view – wrong information about value and weight of an item affecting pickpocketing success on the page, but you didn't correct it either, instead just reworded it. ::*The "Not all items are stealable" section is badly worded, but you didn't improve it, only removed information. ::*You really think, "where in the target that item is located" is better than "from the specific inventory pocket"? ::*The chances table: I understand your attempt to make e.g. "worn" rings distinguishable from "carried" rings, but with the (original) introducing explanation I don't think the table can be misread. Furthermore, you replaced the needed pick pocket skill with chance – which actually is the exact opposite of the mechanism. And again information removed. ::*Also, from "proofreading" I expect less errors in spelling and punctuation and better wording. ::I probably missed some … ::For your answer here – that's exactly how I prefer it: one discussion in one place. :) -- -- You talkin' to me? -- cC -- 13:43, April 2, 2019 (UTC) :::As you know, the current quality of this wiki is limited. There are grammar and spelling mistakes all over the place, and the writing style of many articles is poor. My goal when proofreading is not to produce high quality prose, that would be overkill. My goal is to remove the biggest mistakes and replace them with something that makes a bit more sense and has less or no mistakes. I have certainly made some mistakes in my edits. However, once I'm finished with one of my proofreading there are far less mistakes than there were before I started, and I believe that's what matters most. :::*''"This page is specifically for …" makes more sense in combination with the following sentence.'' "This page is specifically for…" is redundant and wordy. I could explain in detail how my change improves that sentence, but it would take long, and this one is so irrelevant that I'll skip it. :::*''You removed the whole section about usable items, as well as "All races can become a thief as a profession."'' I removed it because all that info is already available in the infobox. In other words, I removed a pointless duplication that doesn't add anything useful to the article. :::*''I don't agree with your handling of the expanded Thieving Abilities: "Baldur's Gate 2 adds" – despite the wrong numbering system, "2" instead of "II" – makes no sense for players who started right with the Enhanced Edition of Baldur's Gate I.'' Indeed, I left a couple of minor mistakes there. But, as stated above, my goal is not to create perfect prose, it is to improve substantially on what was there before. The text I replaced was contradictory, ambiguous, chaotic, and full of big mistakes of all kinds. Compared to that, two minor mistakes is a major improvement. :::*''There's still the – from my point of view – wrong information about value and weight of an item affecting pickpocketing success on the page, but you didn't correct it either, instead just reworded it.'' Exactly, that was just what I meant to do. I don't know if the info about the weight is right or wrong, I just wanted to improve the quality of the text, and that much I did. :::*''The "Not all items are stealable" section is badly worded, but you didn't improve it, only removed information.'' I believe that the audience of this wikipedia are players of the BG games series. 99% of these players don't know anything about NearInfinity, item flags, or any other technical stuff. And they don't need to know, that's not their business. Only modders and such need to know what a droppable item flag is. And they have plenty of websites with that kind of info. This wiki is not the place for that unintelligible jargon. :::*''You really think, "where in the target that item is located" is better than "from the specific inventory pocket"?'' From my dictionary: A pocket is a kind of small bag which forms part of a piece of clothing, and which is used for carrying small things such as money or a handkerchief. As you can see, talking about inventory pockets is plainly wrong, there's no such thing as inventory pockets. I replaced a sentence that is plainly wrong with a sentence which is correct but can (probably) be improved. So yes, my edit is definitely better. :::*''The chances table: I understand your attempt to make e.g. "worn" rings distinguishable from "carried" rings, but with the (original) introducing explanation I don't think the table can be misread. '' As stated above, the text at the top of that section doesn't make sense for several reasons: There's no such thing as "inventory pockets"; and the audience of this wiki (myself included) don't know, don't want to know, and don't need to know what a cre-file is. With no (understandable) explanation, there's nothing to prevent someone from thinking that the skill needed to pick an amulet from a standard inventory slot is 80. :::*''Furthermore, you replaced the needed pick pocket skill with chance – which actually is the exact opposite of the mechanism.'' I made a mistake there, one that takes about thirty seconds to correct. The current header, by the way, is also wrong, the info in that column is not "Pick Pockets" (which doesn't mean anything as a column header), it's "Pick Pockets skill required for success". :::*''And again information removed.'' Again, the information removed is a duplication of information that has already been presented in the article. In this case, the fact that helmets, armors, etc., cannot be stolen while they're being worn. :::*''Also, from "proofreading" I expect less errors in spelling and punctuation and better wording.'' I have reviewed all the text I wrote and I haven't found a single spelling or punctuation error, or any poor wording. Which makes sense to me because I happen to be a licensed English teacher. But I'm sure I must have missed something. Could you be more specific about those errors and bad wording? :::Alonshow (talk) 00:02, April 3, 2019 (UTC) ::::Sorry for letting you wait so long for an answer. Your wall of text was even higher than mine, and I took me some time to get back to this topic. ::::Let me say that I'm neither a certified teacher for English or anything else nor am I a native speaker of this language. I know there are mistakes I make, but there are also people (even native speakers) who think high of my speech skills. ::::I can completely agree with your introductory statement about the wiki's "current" (it is like this since 2012) quality. And in fact, any edit by any user should improve the edited article – otherwise it shall be reverted; this is basic wiki rule. ::::I also welcome the approach to make information less technically written: though many of my own contributions indeed deal with such background knowledge, I often try to word things more trivial myself. One example for this was the "inventory pocket", though I have to admit that "slot" – as Near Infinity tech-talk – appears in that paragraph as well; that was intention, sort of a reference. Of course, "pocket" is to understand in a rather metaphorical way – it's clear that the second sword isn't exactly stashed away in a small bag … ::::Still, there are situations where this "unintelligible jargon" is necessary to explain things – as long as it isn't written "unintelligible". Thus, this wiki is indeed the place for such things, too. ::::You are also wrong with thinking that infobox information may be redundant in the article itself: to the contrary, everything (in general – there are some exceptions, e.g. images) from the infobox should be listed on the article as well – differently presented, though. The infobox serves as a summary of the article, not as additional resource. This is also basic wiki rule. ::::As for "the audience of this wiki … don't know, don't want to know, and don't need to know what a cre-file is" – who elected you the spokesperson of this wiki? ::::And with this attitude of yours, I won't go into the further details of your message. Let me say only this: in my eyes the sum of your edits did not improve the article (while specific ones indeed did), so I reverted the whole thing of one edit in one step. Feel free to re-add single items to single sections from the – this way you might get more specific criticism or even acknowledgement about your work. ::::-- -- You talkin' to me? -- cC -- 12:43, April 6, 2019 (UTC) I didn’t mean to imply that your English is poor. Quite the opposite, your English is very good. I just think I don’t need a lot of help with my writing skills, I’d rather have help or feedback in other areas. Who elected you the spokesperson of this wiki? Nobody here needs a spokesperson, people talk for themselves. When they are interested in a topic they ask about it, comment on it, etc. For example, there are 975 pages in this wiki that discuss THAC0, many of them with lots of comments. On the other hand, “cre-files” are only mentioned once (in your edit). That gives us an idea of how interested people are in each topic. There are situations where this "unintelligible jargon" is necessary to explain things I can’t think of any situation in which it is necessary. In the case at hand, mentioning cre-files is not necessary to explain what an inventory tile is. I’m sure all the aspects of the game can be explained without resorting to that jargon. With this attitude of yours, I won't go into the further details of your message. I’m sorry if my words have been offensive, that was not my intent. I’m just trying to clarify all of this. Having said that, this sounds like you prefer not to answer questions that might require you to acknowledge mistakes. That’s fine. I prefer to acknowledge the mistakes I make, but that’s me. If you don’t, I respect that. About the infoboxes, my bad, I didn’t know how they are meant to be used. Thank you for clarifying that. Alonshow (talk) 11:55, April 12, 2019 (UTC) ::::::Besides citing me while omitting things I said, necessary to understand why I said them, to substantiate your opinion, I read "this sounds like I prefer not to answer questions that might require me to acknowledge mistakes" as an insult. (Apart from the fact that I didn't make a mistake I'd knew of.) And that's that. -- -- You talkin' to me? -- cC -- 14:43, April 12, 2019 (UTC) ::::::: Yeah, in my experience that happens with very insecure people. People who are confident, or at least not very insecure, appreciate feedback and constructive criticism, and see it as an opportunity to improve and fix their mistakes. Very insecure people, on the other hand, get very angry when they receive constructive criticism. They see it as an insult and refuse to acknowledge the slightest possibility that they might have made mistakes. They become confontational and sometimes even verbally abusive. I've experienced that in the past and know it's very painful to feel that way. ::::::: Alonshow (talk) 06:13, April 13, 2019 (UTC)